The Tools Competition is pleased to announce the six winners selected from 340 submissions in the Engaging Adult Learners in Higher Education track!
Adult learners face unique circumstances—they may be parents, working full-time, or resuming studies later in life. In the United States alone, there are more than 40 million adults that have attended college, but have not completed their degree. This track sought to increase equitable access to higher education—by driving retention, persistence, completion, and workforce readiness—for adult learners from high-need demographics who have been historically and systemically underserved by current education and workforce systems.
Winning tools in this track support adult learners with self-directed learning, traversing the higher education experience, and navigating career pathways—while advancing learning engineering as a whole. These tools aim to increase equitable learning outcomes from multiple vantage points, from leveraging storytelling and AI to connect skills to careers and support the future of work, to enabling incarcerated learners to earn certifications and degrees.
This track was run in partnership with Calbright College and Axim Collaborative.
Winners of the Engaging Adult Learners in Higher Education Track
- Personalized, Timely, Proactive Faculty Support of Online Students | Western Governors University (Catalyst Award)
Western Governors University designed three machine learning models to provide faculty with individualized, proactive, and timely feedback on their students’ academic progress within each course.
- The AI Guide | CampusEvolve (Growth Award)
The AI Guide maps the entire array of a school’s supports to each student, at every stage of their learning journey.
- Experience Translator | Wingspans (Growth Award)
Wingspans is an inclusive career navigation platform that forges brighter futures through storytelling—empowering individuals to succeed in work that is better paid and more highly valued.
- OATutor-GenAI | UC Berkeley School of Education (Growth Award)
OATutor-GenAI is an open-source, adaptive tutoring tool—driven by generative AI research—capable of covering all lower-division college STEM subjects.
- Unlocking Opportunity: Tools for Incarcerated Learners | Unlocked Labs (Growth Award)
Unlocked Labs’ tool leverages AI to provide competency-based education for incarcerated learners—offering real-time data insights for administrators and researchers to enhance program effectiveness.
- Career Coach | Mainstay (Transform Award)
Career Coach is a human-centered, AI-enhanced guide empowering adult learners to achieve their career goals through personalized support.
OATutor-GenAI and Wingspans were also named recipients of the Implementation Impact Prize and were awarded an additional $100,000. The Implementation Impact Prize sought to drive high-impact partnerships with track sponsor Calbright College. Competitors were invited to propose implementation plans to conduct research, co-design, user-test, pilot, or validate their product through this partnership.
“Adult learners require an equitable education model with tools that can mold to their goals and needs, not the other way around,” said Calbright College President and CEO Ajita Talwalker Menon. “I’m thrilled to celebrate the winners of the Engaging Adult Learners in Higher Education track, who embody the innovation needed to drive educational and career outcomes for adult learners. Calbright looks forward to working with the winners to catalyze progress, including co-designing and implementing some of these innovations to support our diverse student body and the higher education community more broadly.”
“The Tools Competition winners provide great examples of how technology innovation addresses critical needs of institutions that serve the majority of students in the US today,” said Axim Collaborative CEO Stephanie Khurana. “I am excited to see the impact their work will have—helping more students realize their full potential at a time when access to quality education is more critical than ever.”
Winners in this track were selected by a panel of judges. Learn more about winners in all tracks here.
To date, the Tools Competition has named 130 winners from 44 countries over four cycles. Winning tools are expected to reach more than 131 million learners worldwide by the end of 2027.
The 2023-24 Tools Competition was run with support from: Renaissance Philanthropy, Griffin Catalyst, Walton Family Foundation, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Siegel Family Endowment, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Ballmer Group, Calbright College, Axim Collaborative, Jacobs Foundation, Endless Network, and OpenAI.
Join our mailing list to receive updates on the next competition cycle—launching in September 2024!
